Bishop Webley spoke out following the Queen’s Speech, which included plans for “increased police accountability through directly elected individuals” in the Police Reform and Responsibility Bill.

An elected person would feel a need to gain publicity – which could lead to conflicts with the chief constable, he warned.

And they would not necessarily do anything to improve the quality of service to the public.

Conservatives previously described these as police commissioners, but the title has now been dropped and the Government has apparently been unable so far to come up with a new catchy name for them.

They will monitor and help set priorities for forces, in a similar way to existing police authorities.

Bishop Webley said: “It is essential that the police are accountable and one has to accept that they are in a uniquely important position in a democratic society.

“There are various models of accountability. The system we have needs to be politically balanced and to avoid undue politicisation, and to represent views from all communities. The Police Authority in the West Midlands has that mix in it.”

The existing Police Authority also contained members who were councillors and others who come from different backgrounds, he said.

Councillors gave the authority links with local authorities – which worked closely with forces on a range of issues, he added.

He said: “It would be a very costly exercise to elect an individual every four years. And it would promote a short term view rather than a long term view.”

He added: “What the people of the West Midlands want is a police service that delivers effective policing for the people of the West Midlands.

‘‘And policing in the West Midlands has been moving in the right direction in terms of crime going down, people feeling safer and police being visible. Changing the way the police authority works isn’t necessarily going to change things for the better.”

Bishop Webley has chaired West Midlands Police Authority since June last year.

He is one of the District Bishops of the New Testament Church of God with responsibility for parts of Birmingham and Solihull.

Home Secretary Theresa May said the directly-elected individuals will ensure police chiefs are held to account and serve their local people effectively.

She guaranteed that operational decisions will be left to the police and said the Government also wants to slash bureaucracy and get officers on the beat.

The Bill will also amend health and safety laws that obstruct “commonsense policing” and hand police stronger powers to tackle alcohol-fuelled trouble.

Other measures in the Bill will include a dedicated Border Police Force, which will be created from some kind of merger between the UK Border Agency and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Officials in both organisations remain to be convinced about how this will work in practice and what extra security it will bring to the nation.

The 2003 Licensing Act faces an overhaul to give councils and police extra powers to strip pubs and bars who flout the law of their licences to serve alcohol.

The sale of alcohol below cost price, a multimillion-pound trade for supermarkets, will be banned.